It has been three years since Vanessa Paradis played London, and her compatriots from France were restless: cheering the arrival of her five-piece band, whooping at their guitar noodling, applauding the inventive stage projections and the spotlight that appeared behind Paradis’s microphone, before she came on and stepped into it.

But then there she was: earrings glittering, hair Marcel-Waved, in skintight red trousers and a black blazer that she would later shrug off to reveal a camisole clinging to washboard abs. Dancing around like a teenager in love: wafting her arms, waggling her hips, offering up a track from her current, sixth album, Love Songs, in a voice both steely and sweet. Parping on a harmonica as her musicians — including alleged boyfriend Benjamin Biolay on piano, violin and trombone — rocked out with her.

“Tell me that you love me,” she sang in French on Mi Amor, an upbeat song with a careering bass riff, and the expat crowd didn’t hold back. Paradis, 41, might be best known in the UK as Johnny Depp’s ex but in France she’s a national treasure, famous since adolescence as a singer, model and actor. As enigmatic and self-possessed as she was accessible and fun, this set of 22 career-spanning songs proved Paradis an artist who can sing, and subvert, whatever is thrown at her.

Lenny Kravitz’s funky Natural High was delivered with tambourine-bashing swagger; La Seine was a chanson with a kick and a twist; Joe Le Taxi, her worldwide 1987 hit, came grown up and dubbified. The quietly beautiful Le Chanson de Vieux Cons got people hugging themselves. “Merci, merci,” said Paradis during the long standing ovation, catching bouquets and throwing kisses.